Free Step Dodge

Following the announcement of Capcom Cup 2015's schedule sharing an event date with that of Big E Gaming's North East Championships 16, Big E Gaming had to reschedule their event. The huge Street Fighter IV event supported by PlayStation Experience created a major conflict.
The new date for NEC16 will happen on December 11th to the 13th.

This marks the first time the event has not happened on the first full weekend of December. Due to the conflict between the events, Capcom was able to help Eric Small find a new venue for the event. Eric Small released the new location during last weekend's Summer Jam 9 event.

The new location for NEC16 will be at the Radisson Hotel in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.


The Radisson shares its location with the Valley Forge Casino as well, so there will be plenty of attendees participating in all sorts of festivities. Not just from the...

For Last Round, Summer Jam 9 has concluded, and XcaliburBladeZ reigns supreme as the SJ Champion! He was able to capture back his championship by defeating Kwiggle's: Rachel, Phase 4 and Christie all with Eliot.

Though young Bladez has won with the ambitious blonde at Summer Jam before, he took that character to the extreme for Last Round in clutch sets throughout the entire tournament utilizing the speed, combos and stun game of Eliot. He sent Kwiggle to Loser's Bracket before Winner's Final and also defeated MC Static and Master in fantastic matches.

The bar was certainly raised at Summer Jam this year with all kinds of "heavy hitters" and "death pools." Though the entry was free, we still had 100 players compete. It's good to see that DOA is still holding the interest of crowds as well. The combination of matches, players, interactions from the crowd, the fun player taunting and a classic Lopedo meltdown...

'Defend the North' is a major on the East Coast that is adding DOA5 to its roster of games this year. If you are in the area or plan to travel; make some time for this event. Pre-registration ends October 1st according to the official website. What we have wanted is to see as a community is for DOA to naturally join more and more tournament scenes, and this is a great sign that our game is impressing people on every spectrum.

Last Round is finally scheduled for updates, detailed in the latest patch notes. This update will not only change the balance of the game but fixes bugs and adds a stage and some more costume DLC. Be sure to stay up to date on these changes and check out the trailer!

The Free Step Dodge Streams feature (finally) has been fixed and restored. If you would like to submit a stream please go here. I'll be performing modifications as I'm able, to restore full service as it was. This was an issue that was caused by the site database corruption that hit a few months ago. Apologies for taking so long to restore this feature as I'm sure many of you were utilizing it fairly often.

Thank you all, and I hope you continue to enjoy the feature. Please remember, that any bugs on the website you find would be greatly appreciated if reported in the Issue Reporting board. That is the easiest way to bring an issue to my attention and resolving it.

Shortly after @Gehaktbal won his qualifier to the Dead or Alive Festival, @Mr.Kwiggle came out the Dead or Alive 5 Last Round champion at Evolution 2015 in Las Vegas, NV. Many of the Dead or Alive players in attendance are reporting the great atmosphere of Evolution and great times they had with the community and their friends at the event:


Reginald "Electrified Mann | MC Static" Wysinger, who placed 4th overall, had this to say:

Welp I made 4th THIS time AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHEIRICVTGSJCIFBEJD!!!!!! LMAO but had a very interesting and fun weekend here at Evo. Had a good time and got to explore this sleepless city. Was proud to still put up a variety of my character's on stream too. GG's and congrats to my buddy...

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Today in Paris, France @Gehaktbal was able to defeat Ky-Dragon in the grand finals of Stun Academy #3 and providing him a paid trip into the Dead or Alive Festival tournament being held in Tokyo, Japan on August 1, 2015.

The Dead or Alive Festival will be featuring an international set of players including America's MC Kwiggle and XCalibur BladeZ.

Congratulations to Gehaktbal for his win, and all of the players who attended Stun Academy #3 to support their scene, their game, and their players.

Tom Lee and Big E Gaming have just announced that Kristian "MC Kwiggle" McLean and Ryane "XCalibur BladeZ" Jimenez will be representing North America at the Dead or Alive Festival in Tokyo, Japan on August 1st. The pair will be provided airfare and board by Koei Tecmo.


Ryane was known as one of the early competitors to dominate the Dead or Alive 5 and Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate scene with his Helena, Alpha 152, and Eliot. He's also been known to play a variety of characters in addition to those two so he may have some up his sleeve for just such an occasion. It will be interesting to see if Ryane uses his Alpha 152 in Japan, as it's been reported that Japan believes her to be one of the worst characters in the game...

The genius game theorist, whom is aware of his catching good looks... pastes his face onto Christie and says that the skimpy outfits are distracting and that the community leaders were wrong for the soft ban. My question is, if this is a strategy; shouldn't it be banned? Wouldn't that mean the community did the right thing? Because it's not a fair strategy if it was ever considered one to begin with.

I didn't support the soft ban on outfits, but at this point I'm not sure I really care. Do you agree with this game theorist, or do you think his claims are ridiculous?

Team NINJA has released a new statement for Core Fighters on YouTube boasting 3.5 million downloads and has announced that Rig will be free for Core Fighters until 7.14.2015.

For Core Fighters on XBOX ONE you can get: Tina, Bass, Jann Lee and Hitomi for 4.99 USD. This is a nice deal for anyone interested in checking out two of the best grapplers. Hitomi and Jann Lee are also great starter characters for anyone beginning their fighting journey.

The Dead or Alive Festival voting has been opened up on Big E Gaming's website. It allows one vote per day per person, and the top two voted players will be flown to Tokyo, Japan in order to represent the North American DOA scene in the DOA Festival tournament event.

Be sure to cast your vote at the website, and results are hidden from view so you won't know if who you voted for is winning or not until the official announcement is made at the end of the poll. Below is the official information on the poll:

Big E Gaming said:

We are happy to be a part of the Dead or Alive Festival hosted by KOEI TECMO and Team NINJA. We will be running a poll from now until June 30th 12 midnight PST to find out the top 2 players that you want to compete in Japan. Results will be posted on July 3rd, 2015. You can choose from the following list of the highest ranked players in...

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(2025 News Archive Update) DOA5 was originally shafted from the ECT 2015 stream list, but the tournament was indeed recorded and later on lost in time. It's now available again despite there being no write-up for this event here at Free Step Dodge; it is in fact preserved within our site. Please enjoy this tournament footage, and congratulations must go to Kwiggle for pulling off the win with that incredible Phase 4 gameplay!

Team NINJA announced today the Steam "Monster" Sale has begun, and the Online Patch will arrive at the end of the month.

Dead or Alive Game said:

Steam "Monster" Summer Sale has just begun! 30% Off! Also Fun Theme Costume Set and Halloween Debut Costume Set are 50% off! One more.. Your wait's almost over! The Online Patch (Rank Match) will go live at the end of the month! Thanks for your patience!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/311730/

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Currently, the "30% discount" appears to be in addition to the existing 10% discount that was in effect due to Online Networking not being available. This means the game has a total discount of 40% off making the game available for $23.99 off - saving $16. The game is also...

Thank you to everyone who attended, watched, or helped out with Midwest Championships this weekend. It was a fun event that I hope everyone enjoyed. @Vandy

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Congratulations to Hoodless aka Mark Macklin for winning MWC. Hoodless has also uploaded replays from the tournament which are all now available in our improved media section.

A small update for Last Round just came out, and this patch is for PS4. The XBOX ONE version is still under testing and should be released soon. There are no balance adjustments, but it does fix a few bugs. You can view the list of changes at their official website.

Version 1.03

(2025 News Archive Update) Hajin's Ayane Tutorial is no longer available on Twitch and was not preserved on YouTube. We've replaced the dead link with @Force_of_Nature DOA5LR Beginner video for Ayane. Thank you for your understanding and checking out Free Step Dodge as your number one Dead or Alive Source in the world!

Just a quick reminder: @iHajinShinobi will be streaming in the next hour or so, and this tutorial will revolve around Ayane. As I said in an earlier post, this stream should be beneficial to both parties; people that fight Ayane and people that play with her. She's been deemed as one of the harder characters to fight, so why not get insight from the best Ayane player?

Within the competitive community Kwiggle is definitely one of the most well-known players. He has represented the game at almost every tournament and has won almost every tournament he's entered the past year. Kwiggle is also known for having multiple characters - all at high-level play.

The TFC champion will be at ECT next month to defend his ECT crown winning last year against his little brother Sonic Fox.


Kwiggle can be beat, but you must train and you must play offline (well you should). Do you know how to fight against Kasumi? How about Christie? Form strategies, learn tech; check out the character forums here at FSD! Prepare yourself for ECT next month!

Next on the docket of the 2015 Battle Royal is ECT on June 13th-14th. Team NINJA has thrown in $500 to the prize pot for this NJ major, and like last year I expect we will see some hype matches, and I believe @Sly Bass will be there. Check out his profile when you get the chance because he has lots of educational materials that could enhance your skills before entering a major like ECT.

Also, @iHajinShinobi will be showcasing Ayane in his tutorial series this weekend if you want to brush up on that character. Might be ideal to any competitive player seeing as how threatening of a character she can be.

I have upgraded the Media and Streams section for Free Step Dodge.

The Media category will now (finally) take https as a url so you don't have to worry about that anymore. Additionally, the system has been fixed to get the proper Thumbnail image for any submitted YouTube media automatically, instead of the error'd Thumbnail. You can submit media here.

Streams unfortunately had submitted streams removed from their upgrade so please re-submit your stream if you had before. You can submit any stream here. The Stream system has temporarily been taken offline while I repair it from the last database corruption it caused.

Hello Fighters,

Sadly, today at 11 AM (GMT -4) the Free Step Dodge database (the thing that contains all of our user names, posts, and information) became corrupted. Fortunately, I keep back-ups of the database in the event something like it happens. Unfortunately, the May 6th backup did not complete before the corruption occurred. So the database has been fixed by restoring from the May 5th backup. That means that any accounts, posts, likes, threads, private conversations, etc. that were made or performed since May 5th at 4 AM (GMT -4) were lost.

I apologize for any inconvenience. If you encounter any errors with re-creating lost information please be sure to make a post about it in the Issues board, or if the information is private feel free to start a conversation with me.

Thank you for your understanding,
Matt Ponton

As Team NINJA announced its Halloween Designer Challenge 2015 contest, we have the winners for Free Step Dodge's first Last Round Photo contest. It was very fun to see everyone's submissions, and the top placing screenshots were very tough to judge. It is because of such a great turnout that Team NINJA has helped provide some additional prizes to the Top 3.

First Place wins the following:

• Dead or Alive 5 Last Round (Steam version)
• Steam DLC: Variety Costume Pack
  • 10 Sexy Bunny costumes
  • 10 Overalls costumes
  • 10 Bath & Bedtime costumes
  • 30 Ninja Clan costumes (Vol. 1-3)
  • 8 Showstoppers Encore costumes
• Steam DLC: Pre-purchase Reward Set
  • Currently cannot be purchased otherwise
  • 4 Ninja 2015 costumes
  • 4 Beach Party costumes
  • 4 Aloha costumes

...